


Colorless

by QuothTheSeagull



Category: Gris (Video Game)
Genre: Childhood Memories, Community: poetry_fiction, Coping, Depression, Five Stages of Grief, Gen, Inspired by Music, Letters, Mentions of Cancer, Poetry, Prose Poem, Sad with a Happy Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-04
Updated: 2019-06-04
Packaged: 2020-04-07 17:42:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 2,957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19089934
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QuothTheSeagull/pseuds/QuothTheSeagull
Summary: Sometimes, it takes wanting to forget before we learn how to remember.





	1. Blank

**Author's Note:**

> Recently bought Gris when it was on sale. One of the best impulse buy decisions I've made. Gushed and raved about it to friends, most likely annoyed a few of them. The game was seemingly designed to tear your heart to pieces--and then put it back together whole again, all the better for having had the opportunity to experience it.
> 
> That final scene, especially, really got to me. It compelled me to try to capture the experience in words, so I wrote this set of poems to see if I could achieve the same emotional effect, or at least come close. I'd recommend reading through this whole thing in a single sitting.
> 
> If any word or line feels weird or out of place, let me know.
> 
> Incorporates some minor headcanon, hence the Mentions of Cancer tag.

On my knees I am breathing in  
A haze,  
White, gray, colorless,  
Nameless,  
Blank and vast dunes  
Dotted with jagged stones,  
Ashes remembered,  
Forgotten,  
Forgetting.  
Forgetting, ephemeral,  
Smoke rising from fallen temples  
Of despairing goddesses,  
Leaning cracked Ionian columns  
Partway buried,  
Dust storms passing,  
Leaving,  
Leaving no voice,  
No song.

Breathing. Just breathing.  
Catching my breath.

Stand. Run.  
Running.

Running,  
Running forward,  
Onward, away from a hand  
Whose touch was warm ember,  
Summer evening joy,  
Now cold and jagged as stone.

Running farther,  
Deeper,  
Into the white,  
The gray,  
Distanced from everything,  
Numb.

Away from the hospital wards,  
IV lines,  
Sterile plastic and unfeeling steel,  
Emotionless electronics,  
A loving life measured away to nothingness,  
Nothing.

No color,  
No voice,  
Numb.

No love,  
No song,  
Numb.


	2. Envy

Running, running,  
Moving ever onwards  
Away from every reminder,  
Every inevitability,  
Back to the world of pretty machineries,  
Uncaring, unheeding,  
Moving as it always has done  
Knowing nothing of loss,  
Living.

After all,  
Why should the world care  
If the only world that ended  
Is a private one?  
Who else but I would truly know  
How much more she was  
Than just a voice in a sea of voices?

Condolences, condolences—  
One after another they come and go,  
Hold my hand and tell me to be brave,  
Words touching, bounding,  
Never reaching in—  
Words mean nothing  
To a broken harmony.

Words won’t bring her back.

I keep on running forward,  
Trying not to think,  
Trying not to dwell,  
Trying just to live  
With this absence,  
Wishing I could run forever,  
Not remember.

If only that was possible.

All it takes is one reminder,  
One stray thought,  
One “I am sorry for your loss”,  
And the weight of it all  
Bears down on me like a gale,  
A raging tempest I dare not face,  
Crimson sentiments sweeping the sand  
I kick up with every step I take  
Through this desolation,  
Forming new dust storms  
Ravaging, choking,  
Threatening to take my feet  
From beneath me,  
Bury me under.

Numb silence  
Feels like a welcome refuge  
Until it too becomes a reminder  
Of absence, of loss,  
Until it becomes just one pain  
Replacing another.

To forget,  
To truly forget,  
Beyond reach,  
Beyond thought,  
Only those who truly stop  
Know this secret.

I envy them.


	3. Contrast

Turning gears,  
Turning seasons,  
Leaves and buds returning,  
Life returning.

Running.  
Running past,  
Just passing by.

Even just passing by  
I could not help but notice  
The greenery,  
The smell,  
The earth and its dark tones  
Once more uncovered.  
But I dare not smile  
When I couldn’t even cry.

But I cannot turn away  
When I see a shade of gray  
Noticeable now by its contrast,  
A lone figure  
I would never have paid mind before  
Hinting of refuge, of understanding,  
Of acceptance.

I never ask him why  
He accepts my companionship  
For fear he would ask me the same,  
So we share the little things,  
Knowing just enough without speaking,  
Small splashes of sharp scarlet  
In the verdant colors now sprouting,  
Small talk,  
Small topics,  
Small troubles.  
He smiles more and more  
As we converse over the weeks,  
And soon enough we are  
Seeking each other’s company  
Out of those stone-set hours,  
Seeking my own respite,  
My own small relief.

Small, little,  
Minute, petite,  
Petty.

I am forgetting myself  
In my friend’s presence,  
And inevitable recollection  
Fills my throat with guilt.  
What right have I to happiness  
With petty distractions,  
Shallow interactions  
And small understandings,  
All poor replacements,  
All poor substitutes?

All we are doing  
Is poor mimicry  
Of something I can never regain,  
A sacred polyphony  
No mundane choir  
Could ever replicate,  
A bond  
No small companionship  
Could approach in closeness.  
What does that say of me, then,  
That I would fill the hole  
Left by something irreplaceable  
With plugs too small for my wounds,  
Salves too weak to heal?

And why should my companion  
Bear the weight of these sentiments,  
My folly, my pain,  
My shame?

He does not deserve this.

I do not deserve this.

I do not deserve these  
Returning colors,  
This returning season,  
When nothing they give  
Become full happiness,  
Weighted down instead with  
My knowing they are less.

I do not deserve them  
When nothing I do  
Will make up for what once was,  
Justify the joys of small companionships  
When I have insurmountable debts  
I still must pay.

I don’t deserve this.


	4. Drowning

The rain is falling now.  
The clouds have come,  
Hiding the stars behind them,  
And my world is flooding.

A blue pallor suspends itself  
In place of gray haze,  
And wet dampness supplants  
Choking dryness of dust.

A cool chill follows,  
Settling in the darkening ground of evening,  
Setting roots overnight  
And here to stay by morning,  
Seeping into every bone,  
Seeping in from every pore.

Sleeping in under covers,  
Curled and eyes tightly closed,  
But bundling up doesn’t do anything  
To make me feel warmer.

Sinking deeper  
Into the vast black caverns  
And underground oceans far below,  
Hollowed, waterlogged,  
Falling,  
Delving my own mind  
Wanting no one to find me.

Submerged,  
Immersed,  
Descending.

Wishing the water would swallow me whole.

Drowning.  
Breathless.

Dying?  
I don’t know.  
I don’t think so,  
But maybe it would be easier  
If it were true,  
If salty seas filled my being  
And dragged me under its currents,  
Waves, ships, seabirds—  
Life—  
Left far above on a surface  
Strange to me now as joy.

No.

_Why not?  
You’re already sinking._

Not so strange  
Nor so distant.

I still want to swim back,  
Feel air rushing into my lungs,  
Feel the sharpness of those breaths  
Pierce the pallor.

I still want to feel  
Something more than  
These darkening sensations,  
Fading edges of consciousness  
Disappearing into lightless depths.

I still want to breathe.

_Why?  
Breathing hurts._

I want to live.

Maybe I do envy those  
Who no longer have to  
Live,  
Breathe,  
Remember.  
Maybe I do want to forget.

But I shouldn’t.

I can’t forget her.  
I can’t forget everything  
We’ve experienced together,  
Every cool clarity hovering in the autumn air,  
Every resplendence of summertime colors,  
Every tender tone of spring.

I can’t help but remember.  
I have to remember.

_Why?  
Remembering hurts._

Maybe it’s supposed to.

Maybe it’s supposed to,  
Like the first breath taken  
As you step out into winter  
From warmth and comfort.

Like the first breath taken  
When you resurface  
From underwater.

Because she’s my mother.  
I loved her.  
I love her.

Inhale,  
Exhale.

I love her.  
I can’t forget her.  
Even if not all our memories  
Were happy ones,  
Especially near the end.

I promise I will remember her,  
Even if it will hurt.

Because she loved me.  
Because her love is still with me.

Inhale, exhale.

It is night when I re-emerge  
From the cold depths within  
To the world of the living,  
To the covers I am curled under,  
And the levee is bursting.

I sob into my hands,  
My pillow,  
Salty seas held within  
Finally spilling forth  
For everything I have lost,  
For everything I still have,  
Everything that will still remain  
Through years and seasons,  
Joyful, painful, precious—  
Every remembrance,  
Every memory.

I cry for my mother.  
I mourn her.

And I think,  
I feel,  
I am  
Ready to say goodbye.


	5. Elegy

I remember us singing. I remember my first song, my first voice, hesitant but curious, tiptoeing in the cool air, dainty, almost faint. I remember you answering, light, warm, inviting, encouraging. Step by curious step, I approached closer with every new song, clearer, surer, and you met me in the middle every step of the way. Our voices found each other, October sky harmonies dancing on sunlight, each making the other more, making me feel like I am my mother’s daughter.

We sang together through autumn and winter, carols and coloratura draping all around us, music our shared joy. Threads of notes and lyrics we wove and sewed into new wholes, colorful cloth and fabric made between us expressing happiness, interconnections of tones across heady highs and grounded lows, treading, climbing, gliding, soaring. Breathing the breadth of the spectrum between, yellow, blue, green, red, every shade. Sky, earth, water. Sparrows, crickets, minnows. Sun, moon, stars, clouds. Light and sound reflected on every part, kaleidoscope acoustics, seeing and hearing every splendor. Beauty in every place and moment, falling leaves, falling snowflakes, deep mulch hues to fields of pure white. Crisp contrasts and tender complements carried us through short days and long nights, loneliness left far away. By the time the flowers return, celebrant brightness kissing newly green meadows, we are inseparable.

I remember that summer evening, garland-ground sweetness wafting on the air under the full moon, slow-turning constellations softly twinkling in the wide sky, jewelled lights blinking with cosmic rhythm cast across the firmament. All around us, too, the lights dance, darting to and fro among the petals on the fragrant breeze. With deft gentle movement you take a dancer in hand, clasped in the hollow of your palms, released to fly once more with me an ecstatic partner. High-spirited cheer giggles through my voice, and with lighthearted cadence I follow the lead, turning, twirling, laughing, more dancers coming and going among our jubilation. Staying my steps I trace their flight with my eyes, glowing merrymakers coursing with captivating movements. In their midst, you and I, your beatific smile a radiant beacon. You take me in your arms and kiss my forehead, an affection I reciprocate upon your cheek. As the shooting stars streak across the vast velvet above, I wish then that this will always be.

A promise no one can keep. Moonlight flowers, fireflies, mayflies. Wilting, scattering on the wind into the wide, heartbreaking expanse, parting with all the air in my lungs to where time keeps all its secrets, no notes left to sing. Colors fading, embers dying, leaving only dull ashes and dust-blown desolation. A circle now left broken. An illness we dared not name loosed from containment, insidious affliction leeching away every hue of your vibrance, breaking you apart piece by piece, shade by shade. You kept that truth from me as long as you could, knowing the pain it must bring to know threads unravel and weaves fray, that the music must end and the curtains close. Things no one can hide, things sensitive ears inevitably hear, things sensitive hearts inevitably know by feel. Our song, our dance, winding to their conclusion, stage illuminations dimmed, then shuttered.

Nothing remains to hide in a hospital bed, leads and tubes tethering mind and body even as they fade, slowly, steadily dispersed into emptiness, a forgetful haze punctuated with ever-briefer moments of lucidity. Sharp jagged pain between ever-increasing doses of numbness. I can’t bear to see you hurting, and you know this too well, so you put on your best brave face, a masque too transparent with your sunken eyes and thinning hair, all luster gone beneath colorless lights. I make performance of my own pretenses, feigning ease so you do not have to, but I am too stilted to convince you I will be okay. In the end I can only hold your hand, communicate by one point of contact as all others crumble, fallen apart, setting myself as your steady constant through pain, haze, and lucidity alike, ever present at your side. You squeeze my hand when you feel the brace of consciousness, encouraged and encouraging, and sometimes, I can feel you regain the ease of days gone by, hear you hum the tunes we shared. In those fleeting moments I can still believe you are whole, tell myself this comforting lie. Whenever I recognize the tune I hum along, small harmonies to hold together our ties that bind.

Holding small harmonies, until one day you stop humming, stop squeezing, stop breathing.

You died on a Friday in November, unseasonal snow shrouding the ground.

I ran. I ran, footsteps echoing hollow in the gray and white, heading somewhere I could not be found. Somewhere I did not have to comprehend, contend with these raw emotions, harsh and exposed, windswept stinging sand coursing over barren ground in the gale. Somewhere I did not have to think, did not have to make account of losses and damages, did not have to confront the knowledge that I must now find my tone on my own, paint my soundscape alone but did not know how. Somewhere I did not have to admit the shame of not being able to look into your gaunt, haunted face, look into your eyes one last time, too fearful of finding the crimson warmth of your fire long since extinguished even before the end came, too scared that the lies I told myself were false from the start. Somewhere I did not have to hear every voice reminding me of the voice I lost, voices I cannot turn away, well-intentioned distant sympathies only piercing me deeper.

In the urgent impulse of my flight, I seek refuge in the kinship of a stranger, kinship of unvoiced sorrows and small verbal interactions, momentary salves to soothe my aching wounds, remove myself from the black bleakness swirling my mindscape. Kinship made in hope of treading again on verdant ground, finding again the bright richness of intermingled voices. But try as I might, spectral melodies elude my reach, leaving only a pale-toned companionship that cannot stop fresh worries surging forth. Worries of selfishness in pursuing shallow remedies, shallow replacements of vanished colors. Worries that I presume too much of my friend, presume to value our connection when all we speak are muted trifles, thin misty streaks to the storm cloud hounding me just over the horizon, blue-gray downpours drumming forward with desperate inevitability and consuming silence. Worries of betrayal, of finding my companion ill-knowing of suffering, capable only of the same white-voiced platitudes bleeding me with their gormless detachment. Of finding my own masquerade collapsing before him, kindness made meaningless by my water-washed artifices, my distrust of his empathy when I know nothing of how he may feel or understand, when I know nothing of his own music. Of my secrets spilling over in a tide of anger and misery, a swooping black buzzard tearing everything apart with a discordant shriek. And when I remember again, my guilt only grows deeper at my neglect, at my pretense that what I lost could be replaced by half-hearted connections and triviality.

With nowhere else to go, I retreat inside, withdrawing from contact into numb hollowness, threadbare routines of mere existence. Long days spent in bed with nothing to arouse any part of me, heart or mind. Sinking deeper and deeper, wishing I could just disappear. But holding, still holding, these jagged, shattered memories, these rough-angled fragments of what once was, too painful to keep but too weighted to discard. Too much, too much, too much. An absolute solitude, cold watery embrace muffling all sound, a chill I cannot chase off seeping into every pore, adding density and dragging me down, down, down. Hurting when I try to breathe, choking, drowning, no air. Darker, dimmer. Seized in the maw of a black moray.

And it is here, in the cold colorless depths, that I find myself, my own reflection. Because I can’t run anymore, I am brought face to face with the wreckage, the very thing I am running from. Because I have no more energy to fight, no strength to lash out, only reflection remains, and I slowly find the words to talk all of this out with myself.

I ran, and kept trying to run, because I did not want to contemplate singing alone. I refused to accept that eventually I would have to say goodbye. I refused to meet truth eye to eye, even if a part of me knew the utter futility of doing so. I refused to acknowledge death, even if refusal meant nothing. And in the weight of it all, I forgot to ask myself why, because it seemed obvious to me at the start but somewhere in the middle, I forgot to remember.

But now, I remember. I still remember because there is too much to lose by forgetting. Color, temperature, tone. Sunlight harmonies, kaleidoscope tapestries, lighthearted jubilation. Sky, earth, water. Red, green, blue, yellow, and every shade between. These memories still remain, will remain because what you mean to me will never change. I loved you. I love you. And I will love you always, until my own time comes.

Maybe this was all necessary. Maybe I needed to run, needed to pretend I was okay, needed to hide and forget, before I could learn to remember, learn to say goodbye.

I cried for you then, for everything that was lost, for everything that still remains.

I sing for you now to break my silence, a tribute of gratitude that I could be your daughter, and you my mother. A solitary voice, mending and piecing back together the fragments of what once was, a lone aria to lay to rest the worst of my heartache. I feel the darkness of sorrow welling up from within, rising to engulf me, but I keep singing, because I do not fear it, I do not reject it. It is as much a part of me as warm summer nights, turning autumn leaves, winter snowflakes and new spring flowers. As much a part of me as happiness and affection. I keep on singing, embracing my memories, embracing both mirth and sorrow, laughter and grief.

And deep in my heart, I know you still sing with me, a voice transcending death to return color and vibrance to my world, a voice echoing beyond emptiness and time to hold me close once more, to tell me that love still endures.

Thank you, mom, for everything.

—Your loving daughter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading. Comments and kudos are appreciated.


End file.
